Visitor Levy on Paid Overnight Accommodation: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Mary Fitzpatrick (FF), Industrial and Commercial Panel

He may be that. However, we are all residents in the city, or at least those of us in Dublin, and it is very easy to be critical. I am often critical of Dublin City Council. The House has heard me criticise the council at times so I think I can be objective too. However, fair is fair. It would be wrong for us to end this debate without accepting, as was mentioned, that €1.6 billion of an annual budget is enormous. However, Dublin City Council is not some rogue organisation operating without any checks and balances and it is not fair to disparage our local authority members or devalue or discredit them in any way. They have a very significant task. I have oftentimes raised with the Minister the need for additional resources for our local authority members so that they can hold the executive to account. It does not just fall on our local authority members. We do have independent audit services. Dublin City Council is subject to an independent audit. There is the local government audit services and the national oversight and audit committee. There are public spending rules. Dublin City Council is not operating in some vacuum. It is important to put that on record as well.
Regarding Camden Yard, we could pick many projects. I am not here to defend Dublin City Council's management. What I am hear to debate is a request to Government to bring forward legislation to potentially give the power to local authorities, not just Dublin City Council, to introduce a visitor accommodation tax. We should keep to that debate. There are many issues that we could be debating in terms of local government and not just Dublin City Council. I also acknowledge that while the council certainly needs to up its game in terms of the street cleaning and it needs to introduce the power washing, it has actually made some changes and it is trying. I commend the waste management staff who are out there. Part of what this would do is to allow for an increased focus on the public domain, the public spaces, the greening of the city, our parks, and on creating youth spaces and accessible spaces. These are all really important interventions for a living city - for the city to be vibrant and to be living. It was acknowledged and was raised, something I did myself, that there will be concerns about this. I refer to the Irish Hotels Federation, the vintners and others. The chambers of commerce has done a survey of its members. I think it is 44% that have said they would potentially support a visitor tax.
The Minister acknowledged in his response that this will have to be well planned and there will have to be extensive consultation. That is absolutely the case. It must be well planned. There must be extensive consultation. It would be perverse for any of us to suggest that any local authority and the local authority members would willfully vote to introduce a tax that is going to undermine their own local economy. If we are to accept that logic, are we saying they are stupid, incompetent or negligent? I do not think our local authority members elected to Dublin City Council are any of those things. They are people who have put themselves forward, have been elected by their communities and are there to represent them. When they ask for this, they are not asking for it on a whim. Rather, it is something that has been debated at length for more than a decade. The response of Government is positive and correct. Government should move forward in a detailed, controlled and planned way to allow for this concept to be tested and developed. I thank the Minister for his time. I thank his Department for the work it is doing on this and I look forward to us progressing it over the coming months.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24